Rag Pickers Poem by Saroj Padhi

Driven by hunger
they scamper in the city's underbelly,
like rodents in search of scraps and carcasses,
for polythene bags, e-waste and paper
that would give them a living
and the fuel to dream big
despite outbreak of deadly fever;
nobody feels thankful to them for cleansing
the vast city from disease and squalor;
their dreams seem to have taken wings
from depth of desires buried long ago
under heaps of garbage
where stray seeds sprout too
for old walls to tightly clamber
and try to reach out to the sun
from chinks, holes and burrows,
for each of them is a dreamer
for their children to scale
topless towers of success,
tread power corridors,
and inherit a city
that is greener and cleaner.